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Sustainable Solutions Team Competes at SSC

POSTED ON: September 3, 2026

Team of students outside Foundation Building

The Cooper Union’s Sustainable Solutions Team earned first place in both the Sustainability and Poster categories at the national 2026 ASCE Sustainable Solutions Competition (SSC) that was held in West Virginia this past summer. The Cooper team was the only one to score perfect marks in those categories. SSC challenges students to incorporate sustainable solutions into everyday engineering problems. This year–the first year that a Cooper Union engineering team entered–the challenge was to construct a new data center with enhanced sustainability goals. In addition to their category wins, the team placed fourth nationally.   

“We are incredibly proud and excited about these achievements, especially since this was Cooper’s first-ever participation in the competition,” says Jeong Eun Ahn, assistant professor of civil engineering, who serves as the team's faculty advisor. “This is a wonderful accomplishment for our students and a great reflection of their hard work, creativity, and dedication.”      

Team members included:

Ethan Chan CE'26  
Jenny Chen CE'26
Janine Choy CE'28
Vito Di Gregorio CE'26
Daniel Geystrin CE'27
Tyler Iacolina CE'27
Erin Jyung CE'27
Kaitlyn Kuang CE'26 
Sana Kaur CE'27
Irene Lee CE'28
Sabrina Li CE'26
Ida Pilozo CE'28
Lawrence Zeng CE'26
Rachel Zhao CE'26         

More News from The Cooper Union

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.